Zelda Breath of the Wild Archives - Tales of the Aggronaut

What Zelda Was Actually Like

July 19, 2023 by Belghast

Hey Folks! I’ve mentioned a few times that I have been playing around with Yuzu and while I purchased Tears of the Kingdom on my Switch… I didn’t really get into it until I dumped the game and started playing it on PC. Essentially “Breath of the Zelda” series has one fatal flaw as far as I am concerned… weapon durability. I hates it… I hates it so much… and it ultimately destroys my enjoyment of the game. So on the emulator, I can apply a “patch” of sorts to simply remove that problem. I did not make it all the way through Breath of the Wild until I played it on Cemu, so it isn’t shocking that the same seems to be playing out with Tears of the Kingdom. You also have the side effect of playing at a higher frame rate and with slightly improved graphics.

All told I think I like this entry a lot better than I liked Breath of the Wild. Both games started you out in a sort of “starter island” experience, with Breath of the Wild being a plateau that you could not leave without access to the Glider and Tears of the Kingdom being a literal island in the sky. You are set forth with only the vaguest of directions and left to sort of bumblefuck your way around the island and figure out exactly how you should go about traversing it. At first, this felt grossly inefficient, especially given that you only end up with one shrine marked on your map and you sorta have to guess at the location of the other two. Each shrine is effectively unlocked by the power you’ve learned from the previous one, so by the time you leave the first island you get a feel of how to use the new combining powers to their fullest.

A few months ago Kodra set forth to play some Tears of the Kingdom and found the experience disappointing which led to a discussion on the podcast with me relating my feelings about Diablo IV to his feelings about the latest Zelda entry. The end result is that we thought maybe Breath of the Wild was a good game but not necessarily a good Zelda game. I think the challenge is that we are looking at the game through the lens of multiple decades of living with this series. I personally consider A Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda game in the entire series and I think for Kodra it is Majora’s Mask. As I have been playing Tears of the Kingdom I have begun to re-evaluate that conversation in my head. I think maybe I was misinterpreting my modern view of the series with what the series originally was at its core.

Thinking back about the very first game… I similarly was left to bumblefuck my way around it and failed to make much progress until I got my hands on the above image. Nintendo of America released this magical tome called the “Official Nintendo Player’s Guide” and it contained detailed maps and boss strategies to take down almost every game in the arsenal at the time of publication in 1987. In the original Legend of Zelda, that first dungeon is super easy to find and then the second dungeon requires you to just roam around aimlessly around a ton of territory to actually find it. I am pretty sure originally I had fought these dungeons out of order and did three long before I finished two. So when I got ahold of the maps… I was finally able to strategically knock out the dungeons in order. Similar to Breath of the Wild, I only had the vaguest of directions to go on… that I know Dungeons exist and that I should clear them.

The outrageous options that you have with Tears of the Kingdom and building took a bit of getting used to. Last night before I logged I was held up in a shrine that required me to make hot air balloons to do “something” but that objective was not entirely clear. It was fun as hell though to slap a fan to a minecart and watch it zoom along a track out over a chasm. I’ve built several different boats to varying degrees of success and can see the potential to make gliders that are powered by a fan and can let me cross great distances. Last night I helped repair a cart and tame a horse to drive it. The objectives are what you make of them, and there is often a simple solution… and then a way more convoluted one that you could take if you are so inclined.

I also now get why folks were telling me that weapon durability was not as much of a problem in this game as it is in Breath of the Wild. One of your powers amounts to the ability to take shitty weapons and glue strong components to them… to make less shitty weapons. For example, I glued a fire emitter to a shield and now have a fire-breathing shield. Similarly, I have a Boss Boko horn that is curiously sword blade shaped… glued to a random tarnished sword that I picked up and have turned into a rather effective piece of gear. Per the lore… every weapon in Hyrule has decayed as a result of the opening moments of the game and the only way to make them viable… is by crafting something with them. I still greatly prefer not to have durability turned on however so that when I land upon a weapon I like… I can just keep it indefinitely.

I’m in no real rush to get through this game, but I do find it rather relaxing to play. I’m trying not to let it bother me how general or vague the objectives are. If I see a shrine along my path… I go attempt it. If I see something off in the distance that catches my eye… I go explore it. I am however mostly going in the direction of my next objective marked on my map. However, I was given four equal objectives… and I just happened to choose the one that seemed like it was the correct one. All in all, I think Tears of the Kingdom is probably a more compelling game than Breath of the Wild. The world already feels more vibrant and alive. It also feels like less of a retread of the rote Zelda story we have experienced in one form or another before. There are more new elements being woven into this tale.

I am honestly surprised by how much I am enjoying the game. After the conversation on the podcast, I sort of thought that it would not be for me. I am pleasantly surprised that has not been the case. It is also shocking how much more I enjoy playing Nintendo Switch games on a PC than I ever did on the console. That is entirely my problem, and I wish there was a way to pass saved data back and forth between the two. I might look into this… or I might just get Yuzu up and running on my Steam Deck as that might be simpler. Hopefully, you are having a great week. At this point, I have gotten three certifications this week and will be wrapping up the fourth today. Then by Friday I should have my fifth and be done for a while. I am so ready to return to being alone in my office plugging away in lieu of being in person. The experience has been fine, but by yesterday at lunch, I was done with human interaction.

Games of the Decade: 2017

December 26, 2019 by Belghast

Once again I am continuing down the path to 2019 as I talk through the games of this decade that were important to me. Going back this morning and assembling my picks for 2017 made me realize what a freaking phenomenal year for gaming this was. There are so many games that would have been game of the year… were they not up against other competition. Once again a preface of that this is my personal list of the games that were important to me during the year. Your list probably looks a bit different and there are a few games that were left off because I never quite got into them the way that I should.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Lets be honest… this is the game that sold a bunch of switches. This is absolutely the reason why I bought mine and even managed to start out on the WiiU and then rebought it and restarted from scratch when I ultimately purchased my Switch. I have issues with one gameplay mechanic, and that is the breakable weapons. However even taking that into account there is no denying how good of a game this is. I ultimately greatly prefer playing it now on Cemu running the WiiU game on emulator so that I can apply a mod that removes weapon durability. There is just something about this game world and the pacing that make me want to get out and explore. The fact that through climbing and stamina you can both gate your progress but also feel like you can get anywhere if you try hard enough kept me pushing forward and trying to find the next secret. If I could remove the gyroscope nonsense and the weapon durability this would have been the perfect game.

Assassin’s Creed: Origins

I’ve made attempts in the past to break into the Assassin’s Creed series but there have ultimatley been two obstacles. Firstly they are games that were designed for the console in mind and seem to be way more reasonable when played with a controller than a mouse and keyboard. Secondly they were games that felt defined by a bunch of mini games and things like rooftop chases, which some sneaking around that felt forced and limiting. AC:O pushes the Assassin’s Creed game into a full open world experience where you explore large swaths of the Ancient Egyptian countryside and get a real sense of place and setting that make it feel like you are part of something much larger than effectively being trapped in a single city. The combat itself also seems to be way more forgiving of my desire to rush into combat and not stealth at all, which makes for a better experience personally. I love this game and at some point I will get around to playing the follow up Odyssey.

Night in the Woods

While there are significant issues surrounding the co-creator of Night in the Woods, I cannot write the game off because it is extremely powerful. It spoke to me on such a primal level because it effectively could have been my story. I grew up in a tiny town much like the one depicted in the game, and was one of the few of my friends who successfully transitioned into college… but the fact that I lived at home for the first two years commuting back and forth made for a bizarre experience. I was living in two different worlds… the world that remained the same as High School where I saw the same people I did then on a regular basis… and this new fledgling world of experiences as I took my first steps into college. Like Mae I reached a point in my Junior year where I came perilously close to dropping out of School entirely. This game means so much to me, and nothing is probably ever going to change that.

Mass Effect: Andromeda

While this game was universally panned by critics and social media… I loved it and will be forever saddened by the fact we wont see more of this setting. This is the game that YouTube killed because of some pretty bad issues in the early release candidate that were more or less fixed in the first patch. However by that time all of the damage had been done and all of the demo real of horrific facial contortions was shot giving it an endless stream of memetic images. I liked what this game did to Mass Effect by opening it up and bringing us to an entirely new galaxy with its own issues, while at the same time providing hints of the conflicts from the original game that ultimately lead to the splintering of the Andromeda project. I want to see more of this setting and I am hoping at some point EA allows Bioware to revisit it.

Destiny 2

I love Destiny as a franchise, and while I would have greatly preferred that Destiny 2 didn’t exist from the standpoint of that I would have rather seen the first game transition to the PC and get the necessary upgrades it required, I was okay with the reset because it meant I could finally play the game on my platform of choice. Destiny 2 had a rocky road but today we are experiencing a renaissance of some of the best content that has ever existed in a game of this sort. All of that ground work comes back to the transition from the first game to the sequel and the subtle changes that were made to the way the game functioned. It has been an interesting ride but one that began back in 2017, and for that it will always deserve a space on these sort of lists.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn was easily my game of the year for 2017, and would be a heavy contender if I was trying to make a game of the decade. I love the setting and how it takes the post apocalyptic genre into some very new and interesting directions. I love Aloy the protagonist because she represents a new kind of character that we really haven’t seen much of to this point. I am absolutely hungry for more of this series and I fully expect to see a new game in this sequence release as a launch title for the PlayStation 5. I would love to see this release simultaneously on the PlayStation and the PC at the same time, but I somehow doubt that is actually going to ever be a thing. If you have yet to play this… it is worth the purchase of a console just for this game alone.

Mythic Invitational

April 2, 2019 by Belghast

My wife spent the weekend sick and I think has passed whatever she had onto me. So the end result was last night both of us came home from work completely dead and ready to go to sleep. We managed to last until around 8 pm before hitting the sack, and then slept the entire night through without interruptions. This is not exactly normal for us and as a result I feel a little weird after getting all of that sleep. As far as gaming went I managed to complete the daily key challenge in Anthem before logging out… thankful that you can bank keys for a later time. Shortly after that I attempted to play some more Breath of the Wild and managed to get the outfit needed to sneak into Gerudo Town… but could not stay conscious long enough to actually do that thing. It was around this time that my wife showed visible signs of succumbing to sleep… when in truth I had been quietly nodding off the entire time we were sitting in the living room. Basically I had a very unproductive night gaming wise, but I hope the sleep helps because she sounds miserable… and I am starting to feel that way.

This weekend I got wrapped up in the Magic the Gathering Mythical Invitational happening at Pax East, which is weird considering I generally bounce off of all e-sports streams. However I watched most of the finals on Sunday strangely compelled and finding myself actually rooting for one of the players. What was interesting about this specific format is that it all happened inside of MTG Arena, meaning there was no need for a judge and limited stalling tactics… the end result being very rapid matches given that most of the mechanical stuff was being taken care of by the game. What was also interesting about the roster specifically is it was a mix of Magic Pro League players, 8 Qualifiers that came up from the ladder play on Arena, and a mixture of notable streamer types. So this could have played out a bunch of ways, but if you were a gambler you probably would have bet on one of the battle hardened MPL players to take hope the trophy. However what happened in truth was something slightly more interesting. The final ranking looked a little bit like this…

Andrea Mengucci – MPL member
Piotr Głogowski – MPL member
Janne “Savjz” Mikkonen – Challenger – Mostly known as a Hearthstone Streamer
Ondřej Stráský – Challenger – Top 8 MTG Arena Qualifier

So yes at the end of the day Magic Pro League players took the first two slots… however they absolutely gave them a run for their money. Savjz especially played some matches that could have gone either way and like so many Magic matches it wound up coming down to card draw and top decking. I think this even more than probably anything was a chance for WotC to show that Arena players could in fact compete in the MPL and I wonder if at some point in the future we will see all MPL matches played out using the Arena client. The difference in speed was noticeable as well as the match being way easier to follow for the viewers at home. When watching a normal Magic match, things are happening so fast that you are largely entirely reliant upon the announcers to tell you what is actually happening. Here you can see both sides and the what the players have in their hands as well… and as a result it leads to way more tension as you know what the other player has as an answer to the play that the active player is about to make.

The other cool thing about the tourney is it gave them an opportunity to show off the cosmetic changes to the client including the introduction of special full art skins that you can get for various cards. The game also launched without card sleeve art that is so popular in games like Hearthstone. Throughout the game play they announced redeemable codes over Twitch that allows the players watching at home to pick up some of the things. Here is what I believe is a full list of the codes that are redeemable.

StarterStyles – The Pack Shown in Screenshot
SparkleDruid – Druid of the Cowl
SuperScry – Opt
ParallaxPotion – Revitalize
FoilFungus – Deathbloom Thalid
ShinyGoblinPirate – Fanatical Firebrand

Additionally they are starting to add the cosmetic rewards to various events. Now the interesting thing about a cosmetic is that if you don’t already have the card… you seem to also get the card when you collect its appearance. During one of the various redeems I did not actually have a copy of whatever card it was granting me and the game made a note that I was getting one of that specific card. I fully expect that there to be more cosmetics surrounding the release of the War of the Spark. That is probably a whole other topic however and I am running out of time this morning so going to wrap this post up. I really think Wizards of the Coast finally understands what it takes to make a viable product for the internet age, and I look forward to seeing what happens surrounding the Arena client and future tournaments. This was probably quite literally the first time I cared about anything e-sports related, so good on them.

Clones of Fort Tarsis

April 1, 2019 by Belghast

The other day I noticed that there were three NPCs with the same face standing in line at this meat shop. I figured it was probably just a weird occurrence with the NPC generator putting the same model all clumped together accidentally. However last night I noticed that there were 4 standing in line… and when I turned the corner there were two more. I made a post on twitter about this and by the time I got back to the game as I had simply alt tabbed out, they were ALL within the frame of a single screenshot. Sure there are subtle differences between each of them but they ALL have the same face. This leads me down a path that I was talking about in Slack the other day… but there is no such thing as a random number generator. Effectively you try your hardest to create randomness with a computer, but you will never quite get to truly random because in my experience trying to write them over the years… they have a tendency to get stuck. This makes me wonder if a lot of the loot generation within this game is suffering from a stuck sequence. Imagine if you will a D&D encounter table… with the really interesting encounters happening towards the top of that scale. Imagine also that you have percentage dice that for whatever reason don’t want to roll anything higher than a 85. I have no clue why loot is as fickle as it is, but a when you see things like our six clones it makes you wonder. Additionally not in this shot there are two kids running around with the exact same face, so this may be fairly common in game and I just didn’t notice it until recently.

As far as content in Anthem goes… they have at least roped me in with the whole Elysian Chests thing. At a minimum each night I do whatever the daily challenge is that rewards a key, and then run at least one Stronghold to open that chest. So far I have gotten a bunch of shitty crafting materials and a handful of extremely lackluster vinyls. The ones you purchase off the shop apply a design to the majority of your lancer, but the ones you get for free… are in general a sticker on your shoulder and maybe something on your helmet. Again very disappointing as compared to what I went into that system expecting. However the limited nature also triggers my desire to catch them all before they disappear. I am certain that at some point in the future this game will pull its head out and become extremely fun, and I sorta want to make sure I don’t have pangs of regret by not getting something cool along the way. After a very long dry streak I did manage to pick up a Legendary version of the weapon I use for priming targets, so I am super excited about that. I would have probably rather had some defensive stats on it, but I will deal with it as is because it is lime green and not orange. I also wish that 50% physical damage was not limited to the weapon, but oh well you cannot control the rolls in Anthem.

Other than Anthem I spent a significant amount of time playing Breath of the Wild on Cemu, and have cleared my second Divine Beast. I did the Zora Beast first and then since it seemed to be the next closest worked my way through the Goron area. I found the second Divine Beast way easier than the first one, but I am not sure if it was simply that I went into it knowing what to expect or if it was simply that the fight was much easier. There was a mechanic that I glommed onto pretty fast during the second boss that largely trivialized the encounter, so maybe it would have been rougher had I not tried that. Now I have made my way over into the Gerudo are and am trying to figure out how to sneak into the town. I’ve already seen the next encounter which is apparently a giant robo Camel? So effectively you have an Elephant, a Salamander/Lizard thing, a Camel and a Giant Birb? I say Salamander largely because in Japanese games they tend to be fire aligned, and a lot of other lizard types are lightning aligned.

Regardless still having a blast finally getting deep into this game, and key is one small tweak that made the experience immediately better. There is a plugin for Cemu that allows you to disable weapon durability, keeping you from having to play the game of constantly swapping weapons. That one tweak changed the experience from something I bounced off of out of the frustration of trying to keep finding more decent weapons to use, to something I have dug into hard and am loving. This was my biggest complaint when the game released, and not shockingly once it was gone my experience felt so much better. When playing on the Switch I made a conscious decision to go for the Zora area because I had read online that you could get a repairable weapon there. So much was my focus on trying to stay fully equipped that I altered my path just to make sure I could keep some reasonable gear. Take weapon durability out of the game and I just wander freely without a concern of getting into an area and not having any weapons. It has been a liberating experience, so much so that I really think there should be a toggle in the official game to disable the stupid durability system. In the meantime however I have Cemu and it gives me that functionality.

And finally… I have seen the second credit roll of Stormblood and am officially ready for the release of Shadowbringers. This one was way shorter than I was expecting, and largely entailed a single quest chain. So here is where I am going to complain about Square Enix because they have started doing something that drives me insane. There have been a few quests towards the tail of Stormblood that involved a bunch of cut scenes and multiple phases… all without checkpoints so if you fail at any point you have to complete the entire sequence over again. I absolutely failed the final quest of this expansion a few times until I sorted out the dance of the fight, and each time… it forced me to play through a sequence that was largely on auto pilot and un-fail-able… before getting to the REAL fight. They need to quit this shit and divide things up into multiple quests. That said I did enjoy the tail end of Stormblood quite a bit and I am looking forward to Shadowbringers continuing things. Overall I think Stormblood was a much stronger expansion than Heavensward was… however nothing holds a candle to just how great the post release content was for A Realm Reborn. Stormblood however was way closer to that, so I am hoping this means a return to wider themes. Based on what I saw at Fanfest Tokyo, I am guessing that is absolutely going to be the case. Heavensward had its moments, but there was way too much horrible Elf politics for my tastes, and the Dragons were not much better.

How was your weekend? Do anything interesting in game or in the real world? Drop us a note in the comments.